Gentle Scale Modelling

My scale modelling. I like making 1/24th scale racing cars and 1/10th scale busts. I have a few 1/12th Tamiya F1 car kits and I make the occasional aircraft and tank. Don't expect too much super detailing - I am pretty much an out of the box modeller.

Monday, January 01, 2018

I had most of today to tidy up the work on the 1:48th Beaufighter. I have to say that I have enjoyed this build. Everything goes together perfectly. The decals went down very easily except for the "L" on the squadron code. On one side it broke into three but went back together without any issues. I had to drill a small hole in the top of the rudder to fit a tiny metal pin. This holds the rear end of the radio aerial wire - made from my usual Aeroclub "stretchy thread"

The Eduard masking worked fine although it needed a bit of working out so see how it fitted. The decals were ideal. I did have to sort out some alternate parts in the kit which Tamiya would have you leave off but some careful checking proved that some of the alternates were needed - the navigation dome and the auto-pilot, for instance. I also had to check which tail wheel to fit.

Problems? Always! I thought, after checking, that I didn't have to open up any holes in the underside of the wings or the fuselage when it cam to fitting rockets and bombs but, of course, I found out that I should have done some drilling. As it happened, I could sand the pins off and flat mount everything. It was obvious where they had to go.

One good story about the Aussie Beaufighters is about AB-122, which is the subject of my 1:72 Beaufighter. The web site ADF Serials has this to say: "07/08/45 flown by SQNLDR Gulliver and was the first of eight 93 Sqn Beaufighters to attack 'Japanese' oil tanker with rockets at Tabuan River Sarawak. Post war it was discovered the sunk ship was the 'Mia Moana', the private yacht of the Rajah of Sarawak!"

You have to love stories like that!

Well, that is it. I have finished my RAAF run. My next posting will show all three of the models together. My next build will be a Banff Strike Wing "TorBeau", which comes "as is" in the latest Airfix boxing. The box art is fantastic.

Here are the images of the complete Tamiya 1:48th Beau. As ever, you can click on any image and get a nice slideshow.

Sunday, December 31, 2017

I have spent today working on the 1:144th Beaufighter. It has been a fiddle from start to finish. I missed putting part of the engine into the nacelles so I had to work around that by cutting things down and fiddle-faddling around. I, eventually, got the propellors on. A coat of Xtracrylix matt varnish brought everything together. I then painted the cockpit glass and fitted it. I use Gator's Grip for fitting transparent parts. This works very well - and quickly.

Setting up my camera, I took at least 7 shots of the model (one at every focus point) in each pose. I then, as usual, used Helicon Focus to patch these together into a single image. I now have three nicely posed images, fully in focus. However - I will discuss this after you have seen the images.

By clicking on one of the images, you can see a side show. This is when the problems come to light. Firstly, I have made a bit of a mess of the panel lines on the cockpit transparency and it doesn't sit correctly on the plane. This means, that I will have to remove it, clean it up and start again! Secondly, I originally fitted the plastic tailplanes as I thought that these would be easier to fit and glue. However, I had continuing trouble with the port tailplane until, eventually, it fell off and the carpet monster claimed it. Luckily, there was a pair of resin tailplanes in the box, which were the correct ones for this particular marking anyway so, reluctantly, I had to use them. I hate superglue! Anyway, I got them fixed but now, under the glare of the lights and the enlargement, I can see that the port one isn't finished off at all nicely. This will have to be worked on carefully as I don't want to take the tailplane off AGAIN!

Let us deal with the book first. I was going for some sort of presentation of the life of the Banff Strike Wing but what I got was almost a rewrite of the group battle diaries with a few personal remembrances thrown in. Each chapter is a litany of descriptions of sorties, their actions and results. Because the narrative is very dry, no personalities come out and, eventually, I find myself skipping over further details descriptions of attacks.

The book has a very nice selection of images but only one map - which appears to be a railway map of north east Scotland. Given the unfamiliarity of the Norwegian coastline (although I have been to Norway, I only went to Oslo!) I could have done with a few maps showing the main battle areas.

The author could have done a better job by trying to give us the feel for the operations rather than the, sad to say, tedious details of every strike. I understand that people were dying so deserve remembrance but it could have been done a very different way. How about:
Chapter 1 - An overview of why and how the wing was formed
Chapter 2 - Creation of the wing and its satellites
Chapter 3 - The various squadrons that made up the wing
Chapter 4 - A description of the operations and how they were organised
Chapter 5 - The various aircraft that were used with descriptions (and photos - for instance, there is no image of a Vickers Warwick in the book in spite of the plane being an important part of the operations for air sea rescue)
Chapters 6 - 15 - Overviews and highlights of the monthly operations
Chapter 16 - The major (and not so major) personalities - with their reminiscences.
Chapter 17 - The achievements and tragedies (ships sunk - planes shot down and so on)
Chapter 18 - A review of the whole operation from 1944 through to the end of the war
Postscript - What happened next - units and personnel.

Now that would have made a good book!

Anyway, back to the RAAF Beaufighters. I have built these alongside each other. Spraying them both in Foliage green was quite an exercise, especially as I was running low on the colour. ere are a few images showing the build.

All the bits and pieces for the 1:48 version

1:48th

1:144th

I am not normally one for research as I tend to make out of the box but, because the 1:48th version came from a set of decals, I had to do a bit of investigation. There are a few little changes to the plane but, because the Tamiya box allows for other kits to be presented, the parts were all there. However, there is one big thing that I missed. If you notice, I have shown you the port side of both aircraft. There is a big difference - the 1:48th has SK-L whilst the 1:144th has T-SK. On the other side of both planes, the codes is SK - T/L so no difference. As they are part of the same squadron, one would have assumed that they would be the same. Having tracked down photos of planes at both locations (Morotai for the 1:48th and Labuan for the 1:144th) I think that the Xtradecal set is wrong and it should be L-SK. However, I decalled the big one first and only saw the discrepancy when decalling the little one. Too late by then as I had put Microsol on the decals so they were never going to come off. Hence, that is how it must stay.

Next task is to fit them both with the rest of the engines and then give them a nice coat of matt varnish before fitting all the fiddly bits. Having looked at the 1:144th undercarriage, I am not looking forward to that part!

Wednesday, December 27, 2017

The software for the model railroad is nearly ready but I am fed up with fighting it every day. Some time ago, I made an Airfix 1:72 Beaufighter and did it up in RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) colours as a gesture to my e-mail friend (and ex-SBX customer), Mark, in sunny Sydney.

A few weeks ago, I bought the Mark 1 1:144th scale version that is in RAAF colours out of the box.

On asking what I want for Christmas, I suggested to my wife that she gets the Tamiya 1:48th version and then I would have the set!

That duly arrived on Christmas Day so I promptly ordered some RAAF decals for it. I think that all three, in ascending order, all in foliage green, would like rather good.

Anyway, I have started the build and, because they are both going to be built the same, I will make the two of them together. Should be great fun. Here is the first step - putting the cockpits together. Not much difference in size, is there?

Along with this interest, I have been made aware of the Banff Strike Wing during the latter stages of WWII. This wing was created to attack Nazi shipping bringing iron ore down from Northern Sweden along the Norwegian coast. This, very necessary, traffic had to be stopped to put the pinch on Nazi weapons manufacture. The Strike Wing was comprised of Beaufighters and Mosquitos. They had the long haul across the North Sea to the Norwegian coast and then a frantic, dangerous, two minutes of action - guns, rockets and torpedoes - none of which could be used at any real height. 216 brave souls lost their lives carrying out this task (a similar rate to that of Bomber Command).

As a result of this, I have now purchased another 1:72 Beaufighter and a Mosquito Mk. VI along with the required decals to recreate my little tribute to those brave men. Additionally, I have bought "A Separate Little War: The Banff Coastal Command StrikeWing versus the Kriegsmairine and the Luftwaffe 1944-1945" by Andrew D. Bird so that I can immerse myself further into the history. Unfortunately,a separate book of photos is out of print.

Thursday, November 30, 2017

I did get my brain right. I had a look at the other kits and decided to have a go at the Fujimi Ferrari 512S. What I didn't realise was that this was a very old kit. After starting work on it, I got to the point where I had to mount the engine and realised that I was never going to get it to work.

The model might follow the prototype perfectly but getting everything together and strong enough to hold the rear wheels in place was a task beyond me. This is as far as I got.

As you can see, the engine is supposed to hang off all of those thin structural arms. Well, I could see that being a bit of a stretch for me so I put the box where I could remember to take it down to the bin room. However, now that I have opened it up again, I think that I will just replace it on the shelf and have a second go some other time.

Ashamed of myself, I dragged the Corvette C7.R out one more time and had a third go at getting the black and yellow masked off. This time it worked to an halfway decent level. I decided that I would regard this as a "four feet" model. This is an expression that Aaron Spilling (an old SBX customer and creator of Paint4Models web site) used which meant "only look at this model from four feet away". Well, the Corvette isn't quite that bad but it isn't a good idea to get too close!

Any way, I finished the painting and started on the decals. There are nearly 100 of these and some are really tiny. I lost some of the little red arrows that indicate the door and panel opening catches. I scanned in one I had left, put it into Illustrator and placed it on a background of yellow as near as I could get to the car colour. Then I made a few copies and printed them out onto a sheet of white decal paper. After a coat of varnish,I placed them on the car. The idea of the yellow background was as follows. If you print yellow or red onto clear decal paper, the colour is very muted as the printer expects to get white paper behind it. However, if you print just the arrow onto white decal paper, you then have to trim the image. As the arrow is only 2mm long, this wouldn't work. By putting a yellow background, I could cut out the arrow and leave some of the background. Not ideal but better than no arrow, or at least that is what I thought. This is the result.

It looks terrible when seen at that magnification but it looks OK on the model from that four foot distance!

In this picture you can see some of the other arrows. Although the background does show, the arrow is still there which is better than not.

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

I would like to blame it on medication and pain but I am just not getting it with the models I am currently making. Both the Chevvie and the Seastar suffer from the same problem. I can't mask off an area without the paint bleeding underneath.

As a consequence, I have put both kits back into their boxes in the hope - along with the BMW M3, that I will get my brain right and come back to them.

So, I have three choices - well, four actually if I include dropping making models for now and going back to my model railway. Mind you, I have a mental block there as well at the moment!

My three choices are:

Make the recently purchased 1:144th Beaufighter - easy choice as it is all over foliage green, being an RAAF aircraft. This means "No Masking"!

Make the Airfix 1:72 Hurricane Mk. I. This would be an easy build except that there are 51 pieces so maybe not. It does have upper surface camouflage but I managed this on the Spitfire so hopefully...

Make the recently acquired Tamiya 1:24th Mercedes AMG GT3 which, again, would be a good choice as it has a single body colour so no masking as well. Also, it is a Tamiya kit so there shouldn't be any gotchas.

Then again, I have a pile of other racing sports cars to make so why not one of them?

Sunday, November 12, 2017

As mentioned in the last entry, my next aircraft was to be the Airfix Hurricane. I only have one other aircraft in the "stash" and that is a very short run Sword Lockheed Seastar. I bought this when I was on a roll with US Navy trainers - having made a T-2 Buckeye and a T-45.

However, before buying the Hurricane, I had a look at the Sword kit and thought - no location pins, bits of resin, lots of photo-etch(PE). I can leave this one until later.

I must have had a brainstorm! I have had to give another couple of coats of yellow to the Corvette and then sand some bumpy bits down so I couldn't carry on with that. (So much for me finishing it today and getting on with the railroad tomorrow). As I was in kit building mode, I thought about the Hurricane but then said "Why not. The Seastar can't be any more difficult than resin Fairey Gannet, which I finished successfully some years ago". So, out came the Sword kit and off I went.

A nice looking plane and in white and international orange.

First things first and the cockpits have to be built. There is quite a bit of PE in the cockpit. Fortunately, I have an Etch-mate PE folding tool and some good Zap-A-Gap CA glue. So, in my new slow and careful modelling mood, I worked slowly through. Then the carpet monster came into play. I made up the two control panels. Both are a sandwich of a plastic back, a PE black layer for the dial faces and a PE outer layer for the panel surrounds. I got as far as gluing on the black layer for both panels and was waiting for the CA to go off. After painting the tub of the cockpit and the resin bang seats, I couldn't find one of the panels. I even asked SWMBO to have a look for me but no luck.

I used the black panel layer as a pattern and cut a new styrene backing, and, one would have thought, I painted the face black to imitate the missing PE. No, I forgot that stage so having glued the panel on, I had to paint in the tiny dials with black paint. I went for dinner. Came back an hour later and, in making the front undercarriage bay, dropped a part and went looking for it. Not only did I find the dropped part but also the panel from previous. The carpet monster was having fun with me by hiding it earlier but letting me have it back, eventually. I had to cut the front PE of the new styrene backing and put it all back together.

This is where I am at the moment.

(you can click on any image for a slide show)

After that little episode, I began to look at moving on. The cockpits fit into the fuselage but, true to a short run kit, there is just a little bump to align everything. Added to this is that the front cockpit is glued to the front undercarriage bay which means, I am sure you can tell, lots of opportunities to fit it in the wrong place!

As it was nearly eight pm, I decided to write up the blog and leave the kit until I am fresh tomorrow morning.